THE DEVELOPMENT REPORT: Alameda works to bring more affordable housing

To a casual observer, the scene that played out during at the Alameda City Council’s January 2 discussion about the Marina Cove housing development may have held some surprises. The city’s top planner, Andrew Thomas, was detailing his efforts to prod developer Trident Partners to build more homes on the 7.14 acre Marina Cove II site, which now holds a warehouse. The developer’s representative had insisted that the company only wanted to build the 69 homes originally approved for the site.

“This is very unusual when the planner for the city is telling a developer, ‘We want more units,’” Thomas told the council. “But it’s something that’s going to be happening much more often.”

Alameda’s six-month-old housing plan – which for the first time in four decades permits the development of apartments and other multifamily housing on the Island – is enduring some of its first tests as new housing development begins to awaken from a recession-induced coma. The Marina Cove development, one of several restarted in recent months after years of relative inactivity, was seen by city leaders as an historic marker because it will include the first privately funded and managed multifamily housing built here in two decades (an earlier plan had included townhomes, but it isn’t clear what will ultimately be built).

But some of the local housing advocates who fought for the approval of the housing plan spoke out against the Marina Cove proposal, which includes 52 single family homes and 37 multifamily units. The advocates, who may see this approval as a test of the city’s willingness to require developers to build the housing allowed in the plan, wanted city staffers to push the developer to build more on the site.